The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek Read online

  “We’ll go to Lexington and get better medicine. To a real city hospital. Please, Pa, let me stay and care for you—”

  “This place ain’t fit for you and Honey.”

  “I can provide for my own babe, and I don’t need a husband to do that. I have my books.”

  His voice thickened. “You and the child deserve better. Deserve what I couldn’t give you and your mama.”

  “Who could give us better? Who would want to? Even the homeliest white woman is prettier than me. To them, I’m a blemish, Pa, an outcast… Pa, please look at me.”

  He wouldn’t. But I saw his reddening eyes, the color peaking under his coal-stained grimace.

  “There’s only a handful of eligible men left in town,” I said quietly. “Most of them already turned me down. The others are too scared.”

  His shoulders dipped a little. “I have to see that you and the babe are cared for.”

  I pressed him again, “Who would marry a Blue? Who?”

  In the distance, someone whistled lightly, toppling a horse’s whinny. The tune trickled softly through the pines, down the singing waters, and across smooth rock.

  “That one,” Pa said, and raised his pointy chin toward the creek. He picked up his hat and lunch bucket, whisked out a good night, and was down the steps and off to the mine.

  Over in her stall, Junia brayed and blew warnings, hawing long bellows.

  I leaned over, listening to the courter’s faint melody growing stronger, pressing my angry hands on the railing, and then over my ears.

  I grabbed the courting candle off the table and tossed it out into the yard. The saucer danced violently in the air, then shattered on rock, sending the candle loose and tumbling—my signal that I was not available. I’d tell Pa the courter lit off when he got a closer look at me.

  I sat back down and hummed a tune of my own, studying my hands, watching as they faded into a soft, misty blue.

  Forty-Four

  Like the warmth of winter candlelight cast across a beloved, worn book, he was. What he did was blazing with boldness when Jackson Lovett plucked my courting candle out of the dirt, carried it up the porch, and stuffed it into his pocket that night.

  “Cussy Mary,” he’d said. “I’ll be needing this for my daughter when she gets her first courter.”

  I stood. “You?”

  From behind his back, he pulled out a fisted posy of pretty blue-eyed Marys.

  “If you and Honey’ll have me?”

  There was a promise in his voice, hope in his eyes, and a lick of stubbornness in his face.

  “Me and my babe have ourselves everything we need right here, Jackson Lovett.”

  With his other hand, Jackson reached out and took mine. I pulled it free and turned away, afraid, crossing my ugly blue hands under my arms. Afraid of the feelings running through me.

  From her stall, Junia nickered into the coming night. Out in the yard, Jackson’s steed blew back. Frogs and other night critters trilled and beckoned the cooling darkness, rolling into my discomfort.

  Jackson set the wildflowers on the wood railing, circled to face me, gently clasping my hands.

  “I ain’t accepting charity, Jackson.” I untangled our hands again and turned to go inside. “I don’t need it. I have myself a respectable position, a proper life with my books. And I will make it a good one for me and Honey.” I grabbed the door latch.

  “Cussy Mary.” He stepped closer, put a finger under my chin, seeking my eyes, trying to lock us together. “The WPA makes exceptions for married women now, and I’ll see to it you get permission to tote books. You and those books are a shining light for our people. For me.”

  I’d heard, but still I pushed him away with mistrustful eyes.

  “I read the paperwork,” Jackson said. “Despite those ladies down at the Library Center who were none too helpful when I told them why I wanted to—for you.”

  I could see Harriett’s and Eula’s pinched, confused faces, their reddening cheeks and tight-fisted envy.

  “Cussy, I went to your papa and sought his permission to give you a proper courting, to ask for your hand.”

  Wide-eyed, I spun to face him. “You…you went to Pa?” I asked, surprised Pa hadn’t gone to him to wheedle a courtship.

  “Sure enough. The first time, after you brought those books to my hill, the second was after I saw you at the Library Center. There was a third after a certain mule ate your flowers.” He cleared his throat. “A fourth and fifth. Your pa turned me down six times in all. Six times.” He held up six fingers, wiggling them, and shook his head.

  “Six?”

  “And there wasn’t going to be a seventh, and I had to explain just that to Elijah Carter,” he said firmly. “Same as I did with those fussy library ladies at the Center when they tried to keep the paperwork from me.”

  “Why would you marry a Blue?”

  “I told your papa I love you, and I’m telling you now, and I’ll damn sure nail that surety to every Kentucky crag, post it on every town door. I love you, Cussy Mary. And I will love our children, blue or white, it matters none.”

  Forever I’d let the darkness and brokenness live inside—let others keep it there. His words were as fine as any prayer, and I wanted so bad to fall into his arms and get the salvation, but after accepting for so long what other folks thought of me, it was easier, safer not to.

  “I promised your papa I would love and protect you and the babe. I promise you this now.”

  To think that the baby could be safe, protected, was what every Kaintuck mama longed for in this wild, unforgiving land. Still, I had my route, my books, and I felt a safeguard, a necessity in those treasures, and found my own strength like no other.

  “I give you my word—my absolute love,” he said. “Cussy—”

  I placed a steadying hand on the splintered board of the old cabin where I’d been born, raised by my folks, the one who was no longer here and the ill one who barely remained.

  “No, Jackson, I can’t. I won’t leave my pa sickly and alone.”

  “There’s room on the mountain for Elijah—all of us.”

  Ever so gentle, he ran a thumb over my cheek.

  The pain of poverty, years of shame, scorn, and loneliness paled, and I tried to break free and grasp the hope, embrace this wonderful, odd sentiment called love.

  “I love you. You. And I mean to be the good man you deserve and promise to become the better man that you’ll make me. I want to sit by the hearth every night, read to our young’uns, and grow old together. Please”—he held out his palm, waiting, his words wrapped in a strangeness I’d never heard—“Cussy Mary, be my bride and leave this dark hollow. Come up to the mountain with me.”

  In that moment, I looked into his eyes and know’d he meant the tender words, every one of them. And I know’d I wanted to be on that mountain with him forever.

  He pulled me to him, pressed the promises onto my lips, setting them afire in roaring reds and oranges.

  “For my beautiful book mistress,” he whispered, plucking up the flowers and pressing the sky-blue and white velvet blossoms into my hands.

  Weren’t a single soul who’d ever breathed words like that to me, ever uttered or saw me as anything other than a color, an ugly color—and said so too—or ever made me hear it as a truth. But Jackson Lovett did. And for the first time in my life, the ugliness vanished, and I felt a light dance in me and rise out of the darkness.

  “Marry me?” he asked.

  I heard a pureness in his proposal, the prayer from his heart, and a certainty that he’d been saving it a lifetime and just for me.

  “Marry me, Cussy Mary, and I promise to spend every waking breath trying to be worthy of you.”

  My voice became strangled with tears. I could only nod a feverish yes.

  Forty-Five

  Hou
rs after Jackson left, I couldn’t rest, had to keep moving, couldn’t help marveling at the new feeling of love, its energy.

  I checked on the baby many times, fed her and changed her cloths. Honey must’ve felt it all too because she wouldn’t go back to sleep. She wasn’t crying or fussing neither. I picked up Milly-Molly-Mandy and began to read to her. “Once upon a time.” I flipped open the storybook and stopped. “See the girl, Honey?” I pointed to the picture of the young’un dressed in a frock. Honey blinked and stared at it. “Her name is Milly-Molly-Mandy.” I lightly scratched Honey’s chubby tummy, and she squirmed and cooed. “Look at your pretty, smart self.” I smiled. “You’re eager to learn all the words.” When I finished the first chapter, she closed her eyes and quieted.

  Out on the porch, I folded diapers and hummed a ditty, the tingle of Jackson’s kiss still fresh on my lips. In a bit, I picked up a book on the table and flicked through it. The lantern cast a soft light across my busy fingers, my mind near bursting, picturing the three of us reading together. I’d show Honey my route one day and introduce her to my patrons. I thought of the opportunities the young’un would have. How the Pack Horse library, its books, had opened my eyes to places and folks beyond these hills, breathed a new life now with Jackson. Honey’d have it all. Books’ll learn you were Angeline’s last words to Honey, and I vowed to give the babe all the books. Give her what dear Angeline wanted, and the dreams I was desperate for her to have. Lighthearted, I shut the book and returned to my task.

  The tittering neighs of someone’s mount brought me back. I looked up from my laundry and saw the ghostly lit lanterns, two mules approaching, and what trailed behind them scraping the ground.

  The cloth fell to the boards, and I slowly rose, swallowing my cheerful thoughts, the fear weighing my legs, stitched tight in my belly. One of the beasts was harnessed with a stretcher.

  I squinted at the men’s dark, drawn faces and flew down the steps feeling the gallop of my heart reach my ears.

  “Pa? No, Pa…Pa—” I ran into the yard and collapsed by the stretcher, shook his shoulders. “Pa? Oh, Pa, wake up.” I kneeled over him screaming, then shook him, my voice an ugly crackle, strained from pleas to wake his lifeless form, my hands desperate to bring the dead back to life. “Please.” I clutched his coal-stained shirt, shook harder, clawed at the coarse fabric, the remnants of the mine breathing its last deadly breaths of coal dust into the air. “Don’t leave me. Wake up and let me tell you about the courter. Pa! I’m getting married.” I grasped his cold lifeless hand and cradled his coal-stained head with my other one. “Pa, oh, Pa, the stick held the fire.” I leaned into his face. “Took hold fine. And he’s a fine one you picked. Pa, don’t leave us,” I begged. “Please don’t leave.” I laid my wet, burning cheek against his hard, cold one.

  The beast’s nervous brays, nickering mingled with my rasping cries, spirited into gusts of grieving winds that plucked at the house boards, old chinks, and window cracks, carrying bursts of the night madness through pines.

  “Ma’am,” a man’s soft voice called above. I peered up as the coal miner dismounted and approached with a lantern. “Ma’am. Uh, Miss Cussy, I’m Howard Moore. Mighty sorry to be bringing him home like this.” He grimaced and shook his head, squeezed his red eyes shut. “We was pulling pillars tonight.”

  It was one of the most dangerous jobs of a coal miner, one that most shirked from: the Company’s last job where the men took out the pillars of coal that held up the roof of the tunnel to keep the top of the mountain from collapsing.

  “Elijah got trapped. Mighty sorry.” Mr. Moore set down the lantern, played with the carbide helmet a second. He brushed off the coal dust on Pa’s lamp, then held it out. “Your pap was one of the best, ma’am. Volunteered to pull pillars with me when no one else would. A good, hardworking man who took care of us all. He made me get out first. Insisted. Then I couldn’t find him at the mouth… By the time I got back to him, he weren’t long for this world—” The miner choked and rubbed a tight fist across his coal-stained mouth. “I held Elijah’s hand, and we prayed and talked a few minutes ’fore the Lord took him. He will be sorely missed and will cast a long shadow over these ol’ Kaintuck mountains.”

  Soft murmurs of the other men echoed the miner’s.

  He wiped Pa’s hat on his sleeve, handed it to me, and I clutched it to my cheek, pressed the sooty helmet to my trembling lips.

  The miners trudged up the hill to our small family cemetery and dug hard into the night. Later, when I heard them talking softly on the porch, I peeked out and saw them passing drink. A coal miners’ tradition. One or more would stay with the body, keep watch over their fellow miner, never leave the dead man to face his last earthly moments alone until he was tucked good ’n’ safe into the ground.

  Around 5:00 a.m., I heard a horse’s high whinny and opened the door.

  Someone rode into the yard on a horse-drawn cart. I walked out to the porch, raised my lantern, and saw the coffin it carried. Then I saw the man who had ridden it.

  Jackson.

  I raced down the porch steps. Jackson jumped down from the wagon and opened his arms, taking me in with his strong clasp. “I stopped in town to have a late meeting with Amos Dalton about timber when I heard about the mine accident. I’m sorry, Cussy Mary. I saw the miners leaving for your place. I wanted to help. They chipped in and made sure Elijah would have a fine coffin, and I borrowed the cart from Amos to get it here. We’ll see Elijah has a proper burial. Preacher will be out at first light.”

  To have lost Henry and Angeline in such a short time, and now my only parent. The grief spilled forth, swallowing me. Jackson drew me closer and I buried my face in his chest, and huge sobs racked my body while he held on to me, his arms steady and healing.

  At dawn, I found Mr. Moore sitting on the grass beside Pa’s covered stretcher while the others were half-asleep on the porch. The men roused and told me Jackson had gone off to ride in with the preacher.

  The sky turned into a gray beast. The winds whipped off hats, plucked at our overcoats, and whistled prayers through the treetops as we laid Pa to rest on the knoll up in our old, small Carter cemetery beside Mama and the other Blues.

  Forty-Six

  Pa always believed a marriage in the fall would bring a union of rebirth that’d bud slow, grow steady and strong from the dying season, while a marriage made in the hot summer would be short-lived and quick to whither. We set our wedding date for October. Honey would be three months old, fit and ready to make her first visit to town.

  I’d bought dress fabric from the dry goods store that had opened after the Company store and mine closed down, and used the simple Butterick pattern I’d found in a box of library donations at my outpost.

  The dress hem rested comfortably at my shins. It was a pretty print of golds and chocolates, with a matching sash, a modest scooped neckline, and long, soft sleeves. Perfect. Not too severe, not too prissy, my marriage dress fit the fine fall weather we’d been having.

  “Ain’t that a good-lookin’ dress, child. And these stitches are some of the best I’ve seen,” Loretta’d declared on her porch, peering through her new spectacles when I’d showed it off to her. “Why the fabric’s a sure match for the ol’ ’tucky mountains and your special day.”

  The hills had trotted out the boldest colors this autumn, blushed in scarlets, pumpkins, and golds. The dying leaves shimmered in lifting breezes, somehow breathing life into the dying season.

  On the morning of October 20, I stood over Pa’s grave and thought about him and the days since his passing, his long shadow alive across the slumbering mountains. “Pa, I miss you and Mama. It’s my wedding day, and I wish you could see it—see how the books brought us together. I am filled with love. Jackson’s a good man, the finest. Honey is fit an’ growing. We’re going to be just fine. Fine. You rest in peace now.” I laid a hand on my parents’ headstone.

 
An hour later, Jackson rode us into Troublesome and parked the little horse-drawn wagon at the post office. Before he helped us down, he held up a finger. “I’ve got your wedding present.” He pulled out a brown package from inside his jacket.

  “But I didn’t get you one,” I protested as he took Honey and handed me the gift.

  “Open it,” Jackson pushed.

  Carefully, I unwrapped a book of collected poems by Yeats. “Thank you. It’s beautiful.” I rubbed my fingers over the gray buckram and beveled edges, traced the title on the leather label.

  “It’ll be the perfect start for a library, Cussy Mary.”

  “Library,” I whispered, awed by his love of books.

  “Our library.” He opened the collection to the title page, looked at me, and read the inscription he’d written along with a verse from one of Yeats’s poems underneath. “For my dear bride and book woman, Cussy Mary Lovett, October 20, 1936:

  “‘And shy as a rabbit,

  Helpful and shy.

  To an isle in the water

  With her I would fly.’”

  I traced his script with a fingertip to magpie the precious words away to my heart. With him, I would fly wherever the winds might take us. Jackson placed his hand over mine and the book and squeezed.

  He lifted us down from the buckboard wagon, tethered the horse to a post, then carried Honey in one arm and looped his other around mine.

  Harriett and Eula stepped outside the Center, their faces flushed, eyes straining.

  I’d never told them my business, and they’d never cared to ask. Still grieving Pa, I hadn’t come to the Center in September and stuck to my book route. And when October rolled around, I’d missed the Center again after Honey fell ill with a fever. Mindful, I’d followed the WPA’s regulations and made up those two missed days with weekend book deliveries.

  Jackson turned his head to the library ladies, grinned wide, pausing to tip his dandy new felt hat. “Ladies. It’s a fine morning.”